Crystal Ball Time – Open Book Blog Hop #57

Topic #57

Predict how changes in the industry, in technology or in the tools you use to engage readers (social media, blogging, etc.) will affect your ability to earn a living or make your mark as a writer.

Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.

Let me gaze into my crystal ball and see the future of my efforts promoting my work to readers and continuing to write.

*record skip*

Well, if I could, I’d be doing that a lot in an effort to figure out what works, and what doesn’t work for readers so that I could bring them the best experience possible. Right now, what works, is my book being part of the Wattpad community. OP-DEC: Operation Deceit has over 50k reads in a year and half and The Shadow Soul is nearing 7k in only a half of a year. I house the companion for my series there as well. (The companion is the glossary you get with the book, but on steroids with graphics and videos all made for the books.)

To look forward the wisest course is to take a look at the path you’ve taken thus far. Selling books has become a guessing game since I was able to get into the market. There was a point early on that indie authors were doing very well. Now, they’re lucky to gain a readership, let alone maintain one. Most days, I’m writing all this content for the blog in the hopes that people will eventually find it, and they will enjoy what I’ve posted. If you don’t have content, they definitely won’t come. Likewise gaining subscribers, the numbers go up and down, mostly stagnant this year.

Unfortunately, there is a Catch-22 to all of it. Without readers, authors don’t get read. The conundrum folds in on itself, endlessly frustrating. Reminds me of how my father used to say, if you want to act in a movie you gotta have a SAG card, to get a SAG card you gotta have acted in a movie. You need readers to get readers, but how do you get readers? There are so many gurus spouting sure fire formulas, if you’ll just pay them a couple hundred to get in on their secret—and you know that spells gimmick scam.The frustration deepens when you read about people looking to pirate books. There goes your next meal. Forget paying the rent that month. The lights are going out. How can you write without the power for the computer? Without food in your belly? The money to do your research, market, pay the editor or designer? Copyrights cost and there are all these incidentals that crop up. Forget health care! But these readers are assured you make enough anyway, and they’re poor. Pretty sure my tiny apartment that I share with someone, essentially giving me space like a dorm room, doesn’t constitute living it up. But, they’re poor so that justifies stealing from authors.

However, there are so many great people out there who don’t mind spending the money on a book. The issue is convincing them that your book is worth spending money on. How do you even begin when social media does everything it can to work their software so you are forced to buy ad space you can’t afford, and they limit that too, sending it out to unvetted users? The glut of books on the market are all doing the same thing, and there is this din in the readers ear, and they’re ignoring the majority of ads because it’s all just a blur and ugliness.

What I see coming is writers forced into other work to survive, and giving their work away for free. The glut will mostly remain, because it’s caused by scammers as well as legitimate writers and a herd of terrible writers. Art will suffer. Writers will suffer–be taken advantage of by scammers promising their dreams. Then, the pendulum will swing the other way. Some new way of selling will come along and those prepared to take advantage will. Remember the crisis with music downloads back in the 1990s? It later opened up new avenues for independent musicians, and music survived the huge stint of theft. Those who survived are doing fine and things have normalized again.

Will I be prepared for when the next stage in books comes? Will I still be around when things open up again? Will readers just start to find me, and all this searching for the answers be a drawn out snow ball rolling down the hill gathering more snow?

It takes time to build a readership, and even though these terrible things I have listed above are taking place, things must get better. The reason why is that social media wants to survive, and selling ads is how they will do that–therefore doing the best you can to build upon each successive ad campaign will lead to building readership. Continuing to write great content on your blog, and behave as if the world is watching, will result in readers finding you. You basically just need that one viral post, right? What is viral to you? For me, it’s a few thousand. And that success will build you further successes. Readers will come. Write so they have something to read.

I also plan to continue working a regular job because it eases my need for income and makes me independent of the ups and downs writing alone would afford. Sure thing it would be great to just be able to write, and I will get there at some point in my life, sooner or later. That is absolutely assured.

In the meantime, I enjoy the readers on Wattpad, and I watch that build up to remind me that I’m not half as invisible as I sometimes fancy myself being in the middle of anxiety attacks.

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About Captain Maiel

Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, K has enjoyed more than twenty years professionally writing. K attended Morrisville State College, majoring in Biology, and then continued with English and History at the University at Albany, where she gained her Bachelor’s Degree. While attending UA, K interned with the 13th Moon Feminist Literary Magazine, bridging her interests in social movements and art. Topics of K's writing often include gender and racial disparities, and trauma. In 2014, K graduated from Empire State College (SUNY) with a Masters in Liberal Studies: screenwriting (Film Studies), the politics of film, and adaptations. During her gradute work, K was the recipient of the Foner Fellowship in Arts and Social Justice, a full scholarship.
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Published novels by K include the Civil War drama Blue Honor, the Second World War spy thriller OP-DEC:Operation Deceit, and the controversial dark fantasy, paranormal series The Trailokya Trilogy. In addition to writing novels, K does screenwriting: 8 Days in Ireland and the adaptations of her current novels. A sequel to her second novel, OP-DEC, is in the research phase, while the screen adaptation is being considered for production by film companies.
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In 2015, K. Williams became an official member of International Thriller Writers, but her greatest accomplishment thus far was becoming a mother in 2017. K continues to produce commentary and art pieces on The Blue Honor Blog, publishing twice weekly. A devoted dog mom, K created Shagbottom Theater in which her dogs star as well known literary and stage personas. K is also a visual artist, producing the ZoDuck Cartoon, painting and sketching--digitally or traditionally, as well as an accomplished Photographer. Click here to see more! Whether it's cooking, IVF and Parenting, learning a foreign language, history or dogs, you'll find something to enjoy and for which to come back.
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Excerpts of K's unedited, rough drafts and other scraps of writing can be found at: KWilliamsAuthor on deviantArt.com. You can also sample her books on Wattpad.

Comments

The strengths of self-publishing are also its weaknesses. Because you can publish on Amazon without a gatekeeper means so can everyone else, also without a gatekeeper. Hopefully, the bad writers will be one-offs who eventually settle to the bottom of the pond and the good writers will keep producing quality stories that eventually get discovered. Competition, ultimately, makes some of us better.

There’s always going to be those who sell millions. I think those who really want this will stick to it, and those who are playing at it will fall off. Once the scam book glut is over, we’ll see a much better platform. This is why I am never angry with Amazon. I believe they are trying their best to serve their customers by finding a way to cut the scammers out. In the end, this will do right by us as well.